About Glenn Sorensen

Glenn Sorensen paints still lifes with remarkable consistency, both in style and content. Focusing on objects from his surroundings—most often flowers, though sometimes quirkier objects like cigarettes or a small Buddha figurine—Sorensen casts his subjects in light hues against dark, inky backgrounds. His compositions are often more noteworthy for what they do not include than what they do: flowers hover without their stalks, and when people do appear they are often nearly washed out beyond recognition. “A large part of [my] process is the correction of errors and the removal of anything that may be unnecessary,” Sorensen has said. “I find that this reduction, or simplification, lends to an intensity of intention.” His recent ventures into sculpture, such as the glossy black explosion of leaves in Pair (2011), suggest a departure from this reductive approach despite the identical subject matter.